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louisupdates · 11 months

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The Habit He Can’t Break, 1/4

IQ 123 | Gordon Masson | 9.11.2023

Usually, when an act completes a world tour, they come off the road for an extended period to rest, record new material, and then typically two or three years later, the wheels are set in motion for an album, released, promo, and tour dates.

Louis Tomlinson did not get that memo.

His first solo tour ran late due to the pandemic restrictions, meaning that by the time it concluded in September 2022, his second album, Faith in the Future, was scheduled to drop and tickets for the associated tour were ready to go on sale.

“This tour went on sale late October or November - basically a year in advance,” explains agent, Holly Rowland, who represents Tomlinson alongside Alex Hardee, internationally, while Wasserman Music colleagues, Marty Diamond and Ash Mowry-Lewis do likewise for North America.

Despite that quick turnaround between tours, Rowland reports that ticket sales for the current tour are going very well indeed. “The first leg went through Scandinavia before doing the Baltics and Eastern Europe – Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece – places that most people, especially arena-level acts, don’t really go. And the second leg, which is more mainland Europe, started 2 October.”

The tour is big. Very big for just a second outing in his own name.

Between May and July this year, Tomlinson played 39 dates in the US and Canada across a mix of amphitheaters, arenas, pavilions, and stadiums. In August, he returned to Europe, where he currently is in the midst of another 39 dates in arenas across the continent and the UK, which will take him to 18 November. Then, in early 2024, the Faith in the Future tour goes to Australia for two outdoor dates in Melbourne and Brisbane, before he takes the show to the country’s biggest indoor venue, the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney.

And, as IQ went to press, Louis Tomlinson released dates for a return to Latin America in May 2024 for a mix of indoor and outdoor shows, including stadia, across Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay.

“We’re going to Australia and part of Asia early next year,” states artist manager Matt Vines of London-based Seven 7 Management. We then go into Latin America in May and June. And then we’ll handpick a selection of festivals next summer, before we draw the line on the campaign at the end of the summer.”

Rowland comments, “The tour before obviously was a Covid tour where the dates had to be chopped and changed. The positive aspect of that was that we were able to upgrade venues where that made sense. But it was really nice to start from scratch on this tour to make sure the routing was all going in the right direction.”

Back to You

Playing a major role in shifting that ticketing inventory is a network of promoters also enjoying Tomlinsons rising star.

“On this tour, it’s mainly Live Nation – we use a lot of the One Direction promoter,” explains Rowland. “But for Greece, we used Honeycomb Live, Charmenko did Romania, 8 Days A Week promoted the three shows in the Baltics, All Things Live did Finland, Fource are doing Orague, it’s Gadget in Switzerland, Atelier in Luxembourg, and when we get to the UK, it’s SJM, and MCD in Ireland.”

With a total of 39 European dates, Rowland split the outing into separate legs, scheduling a break after Scandinavia, the Balkans, Baltics, and Athens, Greece, and another after mainland Europe, ending in Zürich, Switzerland.

“It’s a perfect ratio, if I do say so myself,” she laughs. “It was right to split it up – 39 dates is a long, long tour, especially with the American tour throughout the summer being 11 weeks! We made sure to schedule days off, for everyone to recharge their batteries.”

In Spain, Nacho Córdoba at Live Nation promoted Tomlinson’s shows in Bilbao, Madrid, and Barcelona, and reports sell-outs at each of the arenas involved.

“When Louis was last here, it was three days before the pandemic shut everything down in Spain. In fact, I think he played the final show before the market closed because of Covid.,” says Córdoba.

“Last year, Louis organized his Away From Home Festival in Fuengirola, and that also sold out, so we know he has a big following in Spain, and we also know that Spanish fans are super loyal. So, on this tour we sold out 7,000 tickets at Bilbao Arena Miribilla, 13,600 tickets at Wizink in Madrid, and 11,200 at Palau St Jordi in Barcelona.”

Already looking forward to Tomlinson “and his fantastic team” returning on the next tour, Córdoba believes it will be important to see what happens with the next album – and Tomlinson’s expectations – before making any plans.

“The most important thing is to keep the fans happy and keep the momentum building with Louis,” he states. “I am a big fan of the arenas, because the atmosphere at his shows was incredible. So, rather than look at going bigger, it might be a case of looking at other arenas in other markets. Whatever he does, we cannot wait to have Louis back in Spain.”

Stefan Wyss at Gadget abc Entertainment in Switzerland promoted Tomlinson when he visited Zurich’s Hallenstadion on 23 October and explains that he previously played the city’s Halle 622 venue on the first tour.

Recalling the debut solo outing, Wyss tells IQ, “At first, we announced a mid-size theatre club show, 1,800-capacity, but it sold out instantly. Then we moved it to Halle 62, which is 3-500-cap and that also sold out immediately, so it was a really big success.

“They’ve invested a lot in the production of this current tour, and it’s doing really strong numbers, so that’s why we decided to go to the arena this time around, where we set a mid-size capacity of 7,000, which is good for a small market like Switzerland, especially because he’s coming back just one year later and playing a much bigger show.”

Wyss adds, “He’s kept the ticket prices reasonable – and he never wants to do any gold circle or VIP tickets. I think that’s why he’s so close to his fans, because it’s not about maximising profits. Another reason for his success is that in addition to attracting a mainstream audience, he’s also getting the music lovers because he’s just a very good songwriter and has brilliant songs.”

Wyss also notes that with many young fans typically arriving the day before the concert, the responsibility to look after them is extended. “We set up toilets, we have security overnight, we give water away. It’s part of the organization that we will take care of the fans.”

Fresh from announcing 12 dates across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Paraguay, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay, promoter Fabiano Lima De Queiroz at Move Concerts reports that Tomlinson will visit a mix of arenas, as well as stadiums in Santiago, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires, during his May tour.

“Our first tour with Louis was supposed to be in 2020 and we’d booked half arenas everywhere – 5,000–6,000 capacities,” he informs IQ. “Louis was one of those acts who connected very well with the fans during the pandemic, so when we shifted the dates, first to 2021, and then to 2022, we ended up selling out and having to upgrade in certain metropolitan markets.”

2/4, 3/4, 4/4

#iq magazine #louis tomlinson #louis press #9.11.2023

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dailytomlinson · 10 months

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Faith In The Future Tour (Behind The Scenes) for IQ

Full interview with Matt Vines, tour promoters, agents and more people involved in the making of the tour under the cut:

Usually, when an act completes a world tour they come off the road for an extended period to rest, record new material, and then typically two or three years later the wheels are set in motion for an album release, promo, and tour dates. Louis Tomlinson did not get that memo. His first solo tour ran late due to the pandemic restrictions, meaning that by the time it concluded in September 2022, his second album, Faith In The Future, was scheduled to drop and tickets for the associated tour were ready to go on sale.

“This tour went on sale last October or November ‒ basically a year in advance,” explains agent Holly Rowland, who represents Tomlinson, alongside Alex Hardee, internationally, while Wasserman Music colleagues Marty Diamond and Ash Mowry-Lewis do likewise for North America.

Despite that quick turnaround between tours, Rowland reports that ticket sales for the current tour are going very well indeed. “The first leg went through Scandinavia before doing the Baltics and Eastern Europe ‒ Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece ‒ places that most people, especially arena-level acts, don’t really go. And the second leg, which is more mainland Europe, started on 2 October.”

The tour is big. Very big for just a second outing in his own name.

Between May and July this year, Tomlinson played 39 dates in the US and Canada across a mix of amphitheaters, arenas, pavilions, and stadiums. In August, he returned to Europe, where he is currently in the midst of another 39 dates in arenas across the continent and the UK, which will take him to 18 November. Then, in early 2024, the Faith In The Future tour goes to Australia for two outdoor dates in Melbourne and Brisbane, before he takes the show to the country’s biggest indoor venue, the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney.

And, as IQ went to press, Tomlinson released dates for a return to Latin America in May 2024 for a mix of indoor and outdoor shows, including stadia, across Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay.

“We’re going to Australia and part of Asia early next year,” states artist manager Matt Vines of London-based Seven 7 Management. “We then go into Latin America in May and June. And then we’ll handpick a selection of festivals next summer, before we draw the line on the campaign at the end of the summer.”

Rowland comments, “The tour before obviously was Covid tour where the date had to be chopped and changed. The positive aspect of that was that we were able to upgrade venues where that made sense. But it was really nice to start from scratch on this tour to make sure the routing was all going in the right direction.” She reports, “We’ve done nearly 16,000 tickets in Amsterdam, and 14,000 in Paris, which I think just underlines his credibility as an artist and his growing reputation among fans.”

Playing a major role in shifting that ticketing inventory is a network of promoters also enjoying Tomlinson’s rising star.

“On this tour, it’s mainly Live Nation ‒ we use a lot of the One Direction promoter,” explains Rowland. “But for Greece, we used Honeycomb Live, Charmenko did Romania, 8 Days A Week promoted the three shows in the Baltics, All Things Live did Finland, Fource are doing Prague, it’s Gadget in Switzerland, Atelier in Luxembourg, and when we get to the UK, it’s SJM, and MCD in Ireland.”

With a total of 39 European dates, Rowland split the outing into separate legs, scheduling a break after Scandinavia, the Balkans, Baltics and Athens, Greece and another after mainland Europe ending in Zurich, Switzerland.

“It's a perfect ratio, if I do say so myself,” she laughs. “It was right to split it up ‒ 39 dates in a long, long tour, especially with the American tour throughout the summer being 11 weeks! We made sure to schedule days off, for everyone to recharge their batteries.”

In Spain, Nacho Córdoba at Live Nation promoted Tomlinson’s shows in Bilbao, Madrid, and Barcelona and reports sell-outs at each of the arenas involved.

“When Louis was last here, it was three days before the pandemic shut everything down in Spain. In fact, I think he played the final show before the market closed because of Covid,” says Córdoba.

“Last year, Louis organised his Away From Home festival in Fuengirola, and that also sold out, so we know he has a big following in Spain, and we also know that Spanish fans are super loyal. So, on this tour we sold out 7,000 tickets at Bilbao Arena Miribilla, 13,600 tickets at WiZink in Madrid, and 11,200 at Palau St Jordi in Barcelona.”

Already looking forward to Tomlinson “and his fantastic team” returning on the next tour, Córdoba believes it will be important to see what happens with the next album ‒ and Tomlinson’s expectations ‒ before making any plans.

Recalling that debut solo outing, Wyss tells IQ, “At first, we announced a mid-size theatre club show, 1,800-capacity, but it sold out instantly. Then we moved it to Halle 622, which it 3,500-cap, and that also sold out immediately, so it was a really big success.

Wyss adds, “He’s kept the ticket prices reasonable ‒ and he never wants to do any gold circle or VIP tickets. I think that’s why he’s so close to his fans, because it’s not about maximising profits. Another reason for his success is that in addition to attracting a mainstream audience, he’s also getting music lovers because he’s just a very good songwriter and has brilliant songs.”

Fresh from announcing 12 dates across Argentina, Brazil (x 3), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Pery, Paraguay, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay, promoter Fabiano Lime de Queiroz at Move Concerts reports that Tomlinson will visit a mix of arenas, as well as stadiums in Santiago, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires during his May tour.

“Our first tour with Louis was supposed to be in 2020 and we’d booked half arenas everywhere ‒ 5,000-6,000 capacities,” he informs IQ. “Louis was one of those acts who connected very well with the fans during the pandemic, so when we shifted dates, first to 2021, and then to 2022, we ended up selling out and having to upgrade in certain metropolitan markets.”

“In Santiago, for instance, we’d sold out two full arenas of 13,000 cap, but then the government declared that for mass gatherings the numbers needed to be limited to 10,000 people.”

Rather than let fans down, Move added a third date, which again ended up selling out. “I remember being on a night plane from Miami, while Matt Vines was flying in from Dallas, and we were both using the aircraft wi-fi to negotiate via text for that third show,” says Queiroz. “It was an interesting way to confirm putting the third date on sale, just three days before the actual show!”

He adds, “We’re taking a big bet on this tour when it comes to the number of cities and the capacities of the venues, but we’re hoping for the best and we’ve gone out strong. We feel that the artist is in a good moment and that the latest album has just created more interest, so we’re looking forward to when he arrives in May.”

Further north, Ocesa will prompte three dates in Mexico, including a stadium show at the F1 circuit, Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, deepening Tomlinson’s footprint in that crucial North America market.

Meanwhile, in Tomlinson’s homeland, Jack Downling at SJM is promoting seven UK dates in November at arenas in Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Brighton, Cardiff, London, and Birmingham, which will round out the European leg of the tour.

“SJM has done every show Louis has been involved with, including all the One Direction arena and stadium shows,” notes Dowling, adding that on the first tour, the London show was originally pencilled in as a Roundhouse, then two Roundhouse shows, before finally being upgraded to Wembley Arena.

“This time, The O2 arena show in London will be sold out, while all the others have passed the expectations of where we wanted to be on this tour. In fact, when the UK dates were announced, it ranked as the fourth most engaged tour on social media in SJM’s history ‒ his fans are just nuts.”

But Downling also reports that the fanbase for Tomlinson is expanding. “The demographics are pulling not just from pop but also from indie rock now.”

Downling adds, “Louis really looks after his fans. On the last tour they did a deal with Greggs {bakery chain} to give free food to the people waiting in line, as some of them camped out for days in advance.”

Ensuring his fans are looked after properly is the number-one priority in Tomlinson’s live career.

Noting that Tomlinson’s audience comprises mainly young women and girls, Rowland reveals that, at the artists’s insistence, a safety team has been added to the tour to ensure everyone that attends his shows is looked after. “Thry manage all the safety within the shows for the fans,” she explains. “They came in for the Wembley show last year and have been with us ever since ‒ they’ve been beneficial to the running of the tour.”

“When he played in South America, some of his fans were camping outside for a month. So we have a responsibility to look after them. Coming to a show should be a safe space, it’s where they find joy, and we have a responsibility to protect that.”

Manager Vines comments, “One issue we came up against almost all last year was crushing and fans passing out. We adopted a system where we could communicate with fans, who could hold up a mobile phone with a flashing red-and-white sign if they were in trouble but then we’d see them all popping up.”

“I don’t know whether some of that was a hangover of the pandemic where fans just weren’t used to being in venues. But we experienced a number of situations where hydration and temperatures in venues became an issue. I know Billie Eilish went through similar issues.”

With Tomlinson determined to meet a duty of care towards his fans, Vines says that the team now sends a “considerable advance package” to promoters ahead of their tour dates. “Our safety team goes into venues in the morning and basically ensures that a number of different things are in place ‒ making sure that water is given to the fans, where the water comes from, and at what points in the show it happens.”

And on the crushing phenomena, he reports, “We’ve worked out how many fans it’s safe to have without a secondary barrier. So we instruct promoters to have certain barriers in place to relieve that pressure and avoid crushing.”

He adds, “I get detailed incident reports after each show, which lets myself and my management team know exactly what happened, and so far on this tour, we haven’t had any issues with crushing or hydration, which is fantastic.”

Production manager Craig Sherwood is impressed by the way the tour has pivoted to protect the ‘Louies’. “The welfare officers are vital for the young girls who are aged from, I guess, 14 upwards. They can get dehydrated and malnourished pretty quickly if they are camping out for days, so it’s important that we look out for their wellbeing,” says Sherwood.

Citing the extremes that the Louies will put themselves through in an effort to secure themselves prime positions at the front of the stage, Sherwood recalls, “The first show on our US tour was in February, and it was freezing, but we found out that girls had been camping out on the pavement for five days. It’s crazy, as we know these young girls are coming from all over the world to see Louis.”

However, Tomlinson’s connection with those fans is evident in the level of merchandise sales at each show. “It’s a huge part of our business,” says Vines. “In America, we averaged about $36 a head, and it’s not much shy of that in Europe ‒ we’ve set a few national records in terms of spend per head. But we spend a lot of time on merch plans, and we do venue-specific drops and give it a lot of care and attention, as it’s a really important element of Louis’ business.”

Making sure that the Faith In The Future tour delivers Tomlinson to his growing legion of fans, PM Sherwoord’s long association with artist manager Vines made him the obvious choice when the artist first began his solo career.

“I remember doing a lot of promo dates around the UK and US before we started touring properly,” says Sherwood of his work with Tomlinson. “In fact, one of the first shows I remember doing with Louis was in Madrid when he played in a stadium, and I could see it was a taste of things to come.”

The partnership between Sherwood and Vines is crucial.

“In terms of the show growing, our biggest challenge is keeping costs down, because we’re extremely cautious on ticket pricing,” says Vines. “We don’t do dynamic pricing, we don’t do platinium ticketing, we don’t do paid VIPs, we don’t increase ticket prices on aisle seats ‒ all those tricks that everyone does that most fans don’t know about: we don’t do any of those.”

“So, when it comes to the production side of things, we need to be incredibly careful. But I’ve been working with Craig for a decade, and he knows the importance of trying to keep costs as low as possible. For instance, we’ll run the show virtually a number of times so Louis can watch it with the show designer, Tom Taylor, make comments and tweak things. Then we’ll go into pre-production. But we try to do as much in virtual reality as possible before we take it into the physical world.”

Sherwood states, “Basically, we started out with two or three trucks, but now we’re up to nine, and things seem to be getting bigger day by day.”

Thankfully, Sherwood has amassed a vastly experienced crew over the years, allowing them to handle even the most unexpected scenarios. “I’ve been touring since the dawn of time, but the core crew I work with now have been together since about 2010, and I trust them implicitly, so I leave it up to them who they hire, as long as they think I’m going to like them, and they’ll get along with everyone. So far, it has worked well,” Sherwood reports.

And that veteran crew has dealt with some terrifying weather extremes on the current tour, including a show at Red Rocks in Colorado where the audience were subjected to a freak storm with golf ball-sized hailstones injuring dozens of people.

Elsewhere, the crew has had to act quickly when the threat of high winds in Nashville caused problems on that outdoor run. “We didn’t want the video screens blowing about above the heads of the band, so it must have been amusing for the audience to see us taking them down,” Sherwood reports.

Indoors in Europe, the environment has been more controllable. The production itself involves an A-stage set 180 degrees across the barricades, although Sherwood says that on occasion a catwalk is also used by the performers.

“It’s a great lighting show and fantastic for audio, as we have a phenomenal front-of-house sound engineer ‒ John Delf from Edge Studios ‒ who makes life very easy for the rest of us,” says Sherwood. He also namechecks Barrie Pitt (monitor engineer), Oli Crump (audio system designer), Tom Taylor (lighting designer), Sam Kenyon (lighting technical director), and Torin Arnold (stage manager), while he praises Solo-Tech for supplying the sound, and Colour Sound Experiment (CSE) for taking charge of lighting video, and rigging equipment.

Indeed, CSE has ten personnel out with the Faith In The Future tour. “We have eight screens on the road ‒ six on stage plus two IMAGS that we use wherever appropriate,” the company’s Haydn Cruickshank tells IQ.

“We need to tweak the rigging on a daily basis, as we move to different venues, but other than that it’s a fairly smooth process thanks to Craig Sherwood. He is old-school and planned and worked on the production very far in advance, which is a great scenario for all involved. Craig is definitely one of our favourite production managers to work with.”

Garry Lewis at bussing contractors Beat The Street is also a fan of PM Sherwood.

“Craig split the European tour into different runs. So, from Hamburg to Zurich, we had two super high-decker 12-berth buses for the tour party and two 16-berth double-deckers for the crew,” says Lewis. “After the show in Athens, we still have the two super high-deckers, as Louis loves them ‒ he prefers to spend time on the bus, rather than in hotels ‒ but we also have two 12-berth super high-deckers for the crew, as well as another crew 16-berth double-decker.”

Lewis continues, “We’ve worked with Craig for a good few years, and we have a great relationship with him. He plans everything way in advance, so it means it’s all very straightforward for us with no issues. So, we use single drivers for each bus, except on the longer runs or when our drivers are scheduled for prolonged breaks, and then we’ll fly in extra drivers as needed.”

With the production travelling to Australia in early 2024, before shifting to Latin America, Andy Lovell at Freight Minds is gearing up to become involved with Tomlinson once again.

“We did the Central and South America dates on the tour last year, and onto Mexico,” says Lovell. “It was very challenging back then as we were still coming back from Covid, and various systems and infrastructure were in pieces. But it all went well in the end, as we kept an eye on things and worked on it every day to make sure we had solutions to everything that was thrown our way.”

Lovell continues, “Things on this tour kick in early next year for us. Historically, Australian services were quite reliable, as we could use any number of airlines. But post-pandemic, the number of long-haul flights still aren’t as frequent as they were. As a result, the production is being reverse engineered with the budget being worked out before we can see what we can afford to take as freight, and then we try to plan accordingly.”

“Similarly, in Central and South America there are still just a fraction of the flights operating, compared to pre-Covid, so that makes it very challenging. If there aren’t the flights to handle the gear, then you have to start looking at chartering aircraft, or alter your schedule, and that can become very expensive, very fast.”

With everyone working on the artist’s behalf to make sure the tour remains on track, being able to call on such experienced production experts is paying off on a daily basis.

Sherwood notes, “There are a few back-to-back shows over long distances that occasionally mean we don’t arrive at the next venue until 11am, rather than 6am. But we’ve never failed anywhere to open the doors on time, so we know we’re capable of getting things done, even if we have a late start at mid-day.”

Such dilemmas are not lost on agent Rowland. “It’s not so much the routing, it’s more like the timings, because Louis does have two support acts, so the show starts at 7 o’clock, and then when we’re done, we need to load out to get to the next show in good time for loading in the next morning and soundchecks, etc.”

Nonetheless, Sherwood admits that he loves the trickier venues and schedules. “Because I’m a dinosaur, I relish anything that makes things difficult or awkward for us on the production side of things,” he says. “I think everyone on the crew looks forward to challenges and finding the solutions to problems.”

Having amassed millions of fans through his association with One Direction, Tomlinson very much has a ‘pay it forward’ attitude to music and is building a reputation as a champion for emerging talent, wherever he performs.

“He’s a great advocate for alternative music,” says manager Vines. “Louis realises that he’s in an incredibly privileged position in terms of what he can create in terms of awareness. He loves alternative music and indie music, and he understands how hard it is for that music to be heard. But we have this amazing platform where we can put these bands in front of these audiences as a showcase that allows them to build these authentic new audiences. It’s a hude part of his love of music, wanting to help younger bands.”

Rowland agrees. “He took an act called Andrew Cushin ‒ a very new artist ‒ on the road in America with him as his support, and he’s doing the same for Europe. Louis is a fan and is championing his career.”

Indeed, Tomlinson’s A&R skills have knock-on effects for his agent, too. “He asked me to confirm the Australian band Pacific Avenue as support for his Australian tour last year. The music was great and they didn’t have an agent, so now I’m representing them!” says Rowland.

As the European tour speeds toward its conclusion, agent Rowland is enjoying every minute of it.

“It’s incredible ‒ they’ve really stepped things up,” she says, fresh from seeing the show in Athens and Paris. “They’ve got 6 hanging LED screens on the stage, and the whole production just looks polished and professional.”

And Rowland is especially excited about next year’s Latin America dates, which will deliver her first stadium shows as an agent.

“The return to Latin America is going to be huge ‒ Louis is playing arenas and stadiums in South America and Mexico: 15 shows in 11 countries,” she says.

Vines is similarly enthused. Harking back to the Covid situation, when a show would go on sale, sell out, be postponed, and then rescheduled in a bigger venue, Vines says, “For example, in Chile, originally the show was scheduled at a 5,000-cap, half-capacity arena in Santiago. And what we ended up doing was three nights at 10,000-cap in that same venue.”

Vines contends that Tomlinson’s work ethic is outstanding. “He loves his fans, and he loves performing for them, it’s as simple as that,” he says. “He just loves being on the road and seeing how the songs connect live. In fact, the second album was very much written with the tour and live shows in mind ‒ ‘This song could work live,’ ‘This one will open the set,’ ‘This is the one we can do for the encore.’”

Another element to Tomlinson’s psyche has been his decision to visit places off the usual tour circuit.

“Louis has a real desire to perform to fans in markets that are often overlooked,” says Rowland.

Manager Vines explains that while the Covid-delayed first tour allowed them to upgrade venues pretty much everywhere, “On this tour, we’re a bit more competent on venue sizes, but we still speculate a little bit in different territories. In Europe, for example, we’ve gone into the Baltics and a number of different places to test the markets there, while in America, we are looking at A and B markets but also tertiary markets as well ‒ we go to places where people just don’t tour in America, just to see what the reaction is. That was something that very much interested Louis ‒ to play in front of people who don’t normally have gigs in their town. So there’s been a lot of experimentation on this tour in terms of where we go and what room to play.”

That concept is something that Vines has employed before. “I manage a band called Hurts who were pretty much overlooked by the British radio system and we have spent 15 years building a business outside of the UK. And that was built on going to play at those places where people didn’t normally go. They built to multiple arena level in Russia, for instance.”

“If you can build fanbases in lots of different places, you have festivals that you can play every summer, as well as youring those places. It allows you to have more consistency over a number of years, by having more opportunities.”

Such a strategy found a convert in Tomlinson. Vines tells IQ, “Louis also is extremely fan-focused in everything that he does. He comes at it from a perspective of ‘I want to take the show to them,’ meaning he’s always more willing to take the risky option to try something out.”

And the results? “It’s a combination,” concludes Vines. “There have been a couple of places where we now understand why tours don’t go there. But there are more places where it’s worked incredibly well. For example, we enjoyed incredibly good sales in Budapest. And overall, it’s allowing us to get a clearer idea, globally, of where the demand it, which will help us when we go into the next tour cycle.”

#louis tomlinson #iq magazine #matt vines #interview #faith in the future tour bts #holly rowland #this was a PAIN to transcribe my god

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saintsenara · 4 months

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May I ask what medication you take, if any, to manage your adhd? Do you think you could have functioned without medication? And if you’re comfortable sharing, what age were you when you began med school (eg right after undergrad or did you wait a few years after) do you think upper twenties would be too late to begin?

You and a few other women who have degrees are my role models of sorts, or maybe a less intense term would be inspirational. I like to see people thriving with adhd and am trying to plan out how I might also turn things around and thrive with my symptoms, after seeing evidence that it is possible. Thank you!

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i take stimulant medication [lisdexamfetamine - the brand name is elvanse in the uk, vyvanse in the us], which is the standard treatment for adhd in adults. not everyone can tolerate stimulants - and there are alternatives - but this works for me.

so much so that i intend - at this point - to take it for the rest of my life. this isn't the only way to treat adhd - in the first instance, patients need to work out whether stimulants benefit them, since the side-effects can occasionally be pretty intense - but it's an effective and safe one. i can survive without medication - in the same way that someone who is very short-sighted can survive without their glasses - but only in a decidedly suboptimal state which impedes my ability to live my life easily or comfortably. taking medication is an accessibility tool, in the same way that wearing glasses or hearing aids, or using a cane or a wheelchair are accessibility tools - they allow people to live well, rather than just to live.

there's a lot of moral panic about stimulant medication - with "moral" being the operative word, even when it comes from doctors practising in an area other than psychiatry/neurology. the clinical evidence bears very little of this panic out - and if you are worried about any of it, then you should ask a specialist.

on the rest:

medical school in the uk [as is also the case in much of europe] works slightly differently to how it does in other jurisdictions, in that it's not required to do a separate degree in a pre-med subject prior to beginning medical training.

over here, medicine is an undergraduate/bachelors degree in its own right - which is why the letters we use after our names are an abbreviation of "bachelor of medicine, bachelor of surgery", the exact configuration of which varies based on which medical school you went to [bmbs, mbchb, bmbch, and so on], rather than "md".

i began my medical degree at eighteen, immediately after leaving school - and this is the case for the majority of medical students at british universities. uk medical courses usually last for either five or six years depending on the university [mine was for six], after which there are two further years of general on-the-job training [foundation training - the equivalent to being an intern in the american system], before specialisation.

but that's not the be-all and end-all. it's possible to retrain as a doctor at any time. there are numerous courses in the uk specifically for mature students and there are plenty of mature students who study alongside the "typical" undergraduate cohort, regardless of level of prior education [if you have an undergraduate degree or above, you might go into a four-year accelerated medical degree; if you have no formal qualifications, you can gain the skills to meet the admissions requirements for standard-length undergraduate medical courses via an access to medicine course]. i've met plenty of people who began their degrees in their mid-thirties, often while juggling responsibilities the average eighteen-year-old has little cause to imagine, and all i've ever thought about this is that it's impressive.

the same will apply anywhere else in the world. you won't be the only person in the room who is starting their degree at 28. you probably won't be the only person in the room starting at 35. hell, you might not even be the only person in the room starting at 50. and who gives a shit if you are? for as long as you have the desire and capacity to learn, you have the right to.

[and don't just take my word for it. the youtuber rebecca bradford started her medical degree at 37, having left school without a single qualification. she's having the time of her life. you can be the same.]

doctors who come into the profession later in life are a net good. working in medicine means dealing with the astonishing variance of human experience - not simply from the technical, clinical side of things [you will always have that one patient whose body doesn't behave in any of the ways the textbook says it should] but from the social side of things too. it's vital that clinical teams are made up of people who have different life experiences and different transferable skills - and accruing these by taking a circuitous route into medicine is only going to advantage you and benefit your patients.

and adhd is a life experience, let's be clear. a good friend of mine is a nurse specialising in autism and adhd in adults. she decided upon this career after being diagnosed with adhd in her forties. i have no doubt that the lived experience she brings to the table has a tangible impact on how her patients learn to manage and be confident in their condition. not least because, as you say, it shows that having adhd is not all doom and gloom.

nonetheless, my advice would be - even though this is a struggle for the dopamine-challenged - not to rush into things. you need to have found ways of dealing with your symptoms - especially those which are exacerbated by stress - prior to making a big life change. medical school is tough. medicine is tougher. trying to do it while you're also trying to work out how to teach yourself to remember when your bins go out isn't going to be fun for anyone involved.

and you also, if diagnosed as an adult, need a bit of time to grieve not being diagnosed earlier. one potential course for your life was scrubbed off the map when nobody noticed you were neurodivergent as a child, and it's important to come to terms with that.

but once you feel ready to tackle a new challenge, why not? she who dares wins and all that.

#asks answered #general chat #on medicine

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 5 months

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By: Bernard Lane

Published: Apr 14, 2024

Nine of the 15 gender clinics in a landmark international survey for the Cass review have admitted they do not routinely collect outcome data on their young patients.

This survey, together with a new evaluation of treatment guidelines for gender dysphoria, gives unprecedented insights into the workings of gender clinics around the world offering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors.

In the 2022-23 survey, six clinics said they “routinely collected some outcome data”: one of these clinics gave no further detail; one noted the number of patients discontinuing treatment; another used measures of quality of life; two were taking part in cohort studies; and the sixth clinic repeated some baseline assessments. Nine clinics acknowledged “not routinely collecting outcome data.”

The report of the survey results1, published by researchers from the University of York earlier this month, identified clinics by country, not name. Of the clinics that took part, Australia and the Netherlands were prominent with five and four clinics respectively.

Poor data collection was central to the controversy over the London-based Tavistock youth gender clinic.

The Cass review had planned to run a data-linkage study—with help from adult gender clinics—to learn the outcomes of the Tavistock’s 9,000-odd former patients.

The missing long-term data would allow clinicians, young patients and parents to make informed decisions about treatment. The review said it was to be the largest study of its kind in the world.

However, six of the seven adult clinics refused to co-operate. One stated reason was that “the study outcomes focus on adverse health events, for which the clinics do not feel primarily responsible.”

Another adult clinic said, “The unintended outcome of the study is likely to be a high-profile national report that will be misinterpreted, misrepresented or actively used to harm patients and disrupt the work of practitioners across the gender dysphoria pathway.”

On April 12, however, The Times newspaper reported that the uncooperative adult clinics had “bowed to pressure to share [the] missing data”.

Mostly medical

In the York University international survey, ordered by the Cass review, all 15 youth gender clinics said they used a multi-disciplinary team, but researchers concluded there was a “paucity” of psychosocial therapy interventions such as psychotherapy or cognitive behaviour therapy. Five clinics did not offer any of these non-medical interventions in-house.

All gender clinics told researchers that “genital reconstructive surgery”—the creation of a pseudo vagina, for example—was “accessible only from age 18.” The youngest age for “masculinising chest surgery” (a double mastectomy) was reported as 16. In fact, there are documented cases in Australia of 15-year-olds approved for transgender mastectomy. Genital surgery is legally available to minors2 in Australia and practised in America.

“Only five clinics reported routine discussion of fertility3 preferences, and only two discussed sexuality4. Finland was the only country to report routinely assessing for history of trauma5,” the final Cass report says in its commentary on the survey.

In separate studies for the Cass review, three independent reviewers evaluated the quality of 21 guidelines for treatment of gender dysphoria in minors.

Included were international guidelines (from the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health or WPATH); documents from North America (for example, the 2018 policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics); from Europe (the guideline of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists, for example, and Denmark’s); as well as guidelines from the Asia-Pacific and Africa.

“WPATH has been highly influential in directing international practice, although its guidelines were found by the University of York appraisal process to lack developmental rigour,” the Cass report says.

The York researchers chart patterns of “circular” cross-referencing between guidelines to create a misleading impression of consensus in favour of the medicalised “gender-affirming” treatment approach.

“The guideline appraisal raises serious questions about the reliability of current guidelines. Most guidelines have not followed the international standards for [rigorous and independent] guideline development. Few guidelines are informed by a systematic review of empirical evidence [the gold standard for assessing the evidence supporting a health intervention] and there is a lack of transparency about how recommendations were developed,” the Cass report says.

“Healthcare services and professionals should take into account the variable quality of published guidelines to support the management of children and young people experiencing gender dysphoria. The lack of independence in many national and regional guidelines, and the limited evidence-based underpinning current guidelines, should be considered when utilising these for practice.”

The Cass report says it is “imperative” that gender clinic staff be “cognisant of the limitations in relation to the evidence base and fully understand the knowns and the unknowns.”

[ Chart: Number of youth gender clinic referrals over time by country. Source: Cass report ]

Bum steer

Staff at the Tavistock clinic misled patients and parents, or failed to correct their misconceptions, according to a new report from the Multi-Professional Review Group (MPRG) given oversight of treatment decisions from 2021.

These shortcomings of clinicians included playing down the extent of the unknowns of hormonal treatment; not explaining that puberty blockers are being used unlicensed and off-label; not challenging the reassuring but false parallel with the licensed use of puberty blockers for precocious (premature) puberty; not discussing the possibility that blockers will pause or slow psychosexual development; and not sharing figures showing the vast majority of children started on puberty blockers will go on to cross-sex hormones supposed to be taken lifelong.

The MPRG was also troubled by clinical documents showing misunderstanding of “the outcome of physical treatments” on the part of patients and parents.

In the York University study of treatment guidelines for gender dysphoria, only two were recommended for use by all three reviewers. These were recent, more cautious policies from Finland and Sweden. Both followed independent systematic reviews showing the evidence base for hormonal and surgical treatment of minors to be very weak and uncertain. Like the Cass review itself, the 2020 Finnish and 2022 Swedish guidelines recognise that puberty blockers are experimental and should not be routine treatment.

Although all the guidelines in the study agreed on the need for a multidisciplinary team to treat gender-distressed minors, the “most striking problem” shown by analysis of these documents was “the lack of any consensus6 on the purpose of the assessment process”, the Cass report says.

“Some guidelines were focused on diagnosis, some on… eligibility for hormones, some on psychosocial assessment, and some on readiness for medical interventions7.

“Only the Swedish and [the 2022] WPATH 8th version guidelines contain detail on the assessment process8. Both recommend that the duration, structure and content of the assessment be varied according to age, complexity and gender development.

“Very few guidelines recommend formal measures/clinical tools to assess gender dysphoria, and a separate analysis demonstrated that the formal measures that exist are poorly validated.”

Nor was there any consensus on “when psychological or hormonal interventions should be offered and on what basis.”

A survey of staff at the Tavistock clinic, undertaken as part of the Cass review, found specialists divided on whether or not “assessment should seek to make a differential diagnosis, ruling out other potential [non-gender9] causes of the child or young person’s distress.”

Arguing for an ambitious research program well beyond a possible clinical trial of puberty blockers, the Cass report says the field of youth gender dysphoria is one of “remarkably weak evidence” where health professionals are “afraid to openly discuss their views” because of vilification and bullying.

“Although some think the clinical approach should be based on a social justice model, the NHS works in an evidence-based way,” the report says.

“The gaps in the evidence base regarding all aspects of gender care for children and young people have been highlighted, from epidemiology through to assessment, diagnosis10 and intervention. It is troubling that so little is known about this cohort and their outcomes.

“Based on a single Dutch study, which suggested that puberty blockers may improve psychological wellbeing for a narrowly defined group of children with gender incongruence [or dysphoria], the practice spread at pace to other countries.

“Some practitioners abandoned normal clinical approaches to holistic assessment, which has meant that this group of [gender-distressed] young people have been exceptionalised compared to other young people with similarly complex presentations.”

[ Chart: Age and sex on referral to the Tavistock clinic from 2018-2022. Source: Cass report ]

Who to trust?

The Cass report says the missing evidence “makes it difficult to provide adequate information on which a young person and their family can make an informed choice.”

“A trusted source of information is needed on all aspects of medical care, but in particular it is important to defuse/manage expectations that have been built up by claims about the efficacy of puberty blockers.

“The option to provide masculinising or feminising hormones from the age of 16 is available, but the [Cass] review would recommend an extremely cautious clinical approach and a strong clinical rationale for providing hormones before the age of 18. This would keep options open during this important developmental window, allowing time for management of any co-occurring [non-gender] conditions11, building of resilience, and fertility preservation, if required.”

The review stresses that “consent is more than just capacity and competence. It requires clinicians to ensure that the proposed intervention is clinically indicated as they have a duty to offer appropriate treatment. It also requires the patient to be provided with appropriate and sufficient information about the risks, benefits and expected outcomes of the treatment.”

“Assessing whether a hormone pathway is indicated is challenging. A formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria is frequently cited as a prerequisite for accessing hormone treatment. However, it is not reliably predictive of whether that young person will have long-standing gender incongruence in the future, or whether medical intervention will be the best option for them.”

Advocates for the gender-affirming approach assert that detransition and treatment regret are vanishingly rare, whereas suicide risk for those denied medical intervention is claimed to be very high.

The Cass report says: “It has been suggested that hormone treatment reduces the elevated risk of death by suicide in this population, but the evidence found did not support this conclusion.”

“The percentage of people treated with hormones who subsequently detransition remains unknown due to the lack of long-term follow-up studies, although there is suggestion that numbers are increasing.”

The report cites three reasons why the true extent of detransition is unlikely to be clear for some time—patients who decide medicalisation was a mistake may not wish to return to their former clinic to announce this fact; there is a post-treatment honeymoon period and clinicians suggest it may take 5-10 years before a decision to detransition; and the surge in patient numbers only began within the last decade.

Faced with uncertainty and a lack of good evidence, those with responsibility—from health ministers and hospital managers down to gender clinicians—rely on treatment guidelines supposed to advise on clinical practice according to the “best-available” evidence and expert opinion.

In the York University guideline analysis, the 21 documents were rated on six domains, the key two being the rigour of their development and their editorial independence.

“[Rigour] includes systematically searching the evidence, being clear about the link between recommendations and supporting evidence, and ensuring that health benefits, side effects and risks have been considered in formulating the recommendations,” the Cass report says.

Only the Finnish and Swedish guidelines scored above 50 per cent for rigour. Only these two documents, the Cass report says, link “the lack of robust evidence about medical treatments to a recommendation that treatments should be provided under a research framework or within a research clinic. They are also the only guidelines that have been informed by an ethical review conducted as part of the guideline development.”

“Most of the guidelines described insufficient evidence about the risks and benefits of medical treatment in adolescents, particularly in relation to long-term outcomes. Despite this, many then went on to cite this same evidence to recommend medical treatments,” the report says.

“Alternatively, they referred to other guidelines that recommend medical treatments as their basis for making the same recommendations. Early versions of two international guidelines, the Endocrine Society 2009 and WPATH 7th version guidelines, influenced nearly all the other guidelines.

“These two guidelines are also closely interlinked, with WPATH adopting Endocrine Society recommendations, and acting as a co-sponsor and providing input to drafts of the Endocrine Society guideline. The WPATH 8th version cited many of the other national and regional guidelines to support some of its recommendations, despite these guidelines having been considerably influenced by the WPATH 7th version.

“The circularity of this approach may explain why there has been an apparent consensus on key areas of practice despite the evidence being poor.”

Sometimes these gender-affirming guidelines seek to buttress a strong evidence claim with a citation to a study that is weak or involves a different patient group.

The Cass report notes that, “The WPATH 8th version’s narrative on gender-affirming medical treatment for adolescents does not reference its own systematic review [of the evidence], but instead states: ‘Despite the slowly growing body of evidence supporting the effectiveness of early medical intervention, the number of studies is still low, and there are few outcome studies that follow youth into adulthood. Therefore, a systematic review regarding outcomes of treatment in adolescents is not possible’.”

Despite WPATH insisting such an evidence review is not possible, this is precisely what health authorities and experts have undertaken since 2019 in several jurisdictions—Finland, Sweden, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Florida, Germany, and University of York research commissioned by the Cass review.

Yet in the 8th and current version of its guideline, WPATH makes the confident statement that, “There is strong evidence demonstrating the benefits in quality of life and well-being of gender-affirming treatments, including endocrine and surgical procedures… Gender-affirming interventions are based on decades of clinical experience and research; therefore, they are not considered experimental, cosmetic, or for the mere convenience of a patient. They are safe and effective at reducing gender incongruence and gender dysphoria”.

But WPATH “overstates the strength of the evidence” for its treatment recommendations, the Cass report says.

1 In the survey, there was one clinic each from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Northern Ireland, Norway and Spain. The response rate was 38 per cent.

2 In Australia there is no good public data on trans surgery for minors.

3 Early puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones are expected to sterilise young people and may also impair future sexual function.

4 Some sizeable proportion of gender clinic patients might grow up in healthy bodies and accept their same-sex attraction were it not for trans medicalisation, according to testimony from detransitioners, clinicians’ reports and data.

5 Trauma from a history of sexual abuse, for example, or exposure to domestic violence is thought to be among the many possible underlying causes of what presents as gender dysphoria. The Multi-Professional Review Group (MPRG), given oversight of Tavistock treatment decisions from 2021-23, was troubled by the lack of curiosity by the clinic’s staff about the effect of a child’s “physical or mental illness within the family, abusive or addictive environments, bereavement, cultural or religious background, etc.”

6 Critics of the “gender-affirming” treatment approach say it is not mainstream medicine because the “trans child” in effect self-diagnoses while clinicians avoid differential diagnosis and attribute mental health disorders and other pre-existing issues to a “transphobic” society.

7 “In most cases [at the Tavistock clinic] children and parents were asking to progress on to puberty blockers from the very first appointment”, according to the MPRG.

8 In the MPRG’s opinion, the patient notes from the Tavistock “rarely provide a structured history or physical assessment, however the submissions to the MPRG suggest that the children have a wide range of childhood, familial and congenital conditions.”

9 Once referred to the Tavistock, patients typically were no longer seen by child and adolescent mental health services.

10 According to the MPRG, gender dysphoria in the diagnostic manual DSM-5 “has a low threshold based on overlapping criteria, and is likely to create false positives. Young people who do not go on to have an enduring cross-sex gender identity may have met the criteria in childhood. And early to mid-childhood social transition may be influential in maintaining adherence to the criteria. Sex role and gender expression stereotyping is present within the diagnostic criteria—preferred toys, clothes, etc—not reflecting that many toys, games and activities [today] are less exclusively gendered than in previous decades.”

11 The MPRG said it was “notable that until the child and family’s first appointment at [the Tavistock] they have received little, if any, support from health, social care, or education professionals. Most children and parents have felt isolated and desperate for support and have therefore turned for information to the media and online resources, with many accessing LGBTQ+ and [gender dysphoria] support groups or private providers which appear to be mainly ‘affirmative’ in nature, and children and families have moved forward with social transition. This history/journey is rarely examined closely by [Tavistock clinicians] for signs of difficulty [or] regret.”

Critics have described "gender affirming care" - that is, sex-trait modification - as "medical experimentation." This is incorrect. In a medical experiment, you actually collect data and monitor the participants in the experiment. They don't do that. They're cowboys violating all medical ethics - "first, do no harm" - for ideology, money or both.

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gatheringbones · 1 year

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[“You might be thinking that we seem to be talking about people smuggling rather than people trafficking, and that those two things are different. People smuggling is when someone pays a smuggler to get them over a border: in UK law, human trafficking is when someone is transported for the purposes of forced labour or exploitation using force, fraud, or coercion. It’s tempting to think of these as separate things, but there is no bright line between them: they are two iterations of the same system.

Let’s break it down. It is common for people to take on huge debts to smugglers to cross a border. So far, so good: clearly smuggling. But once the journey begins, the person seeking to migrate finds that the debt has grown, or that the work they are expected to undertake upon arrival in order to pay off the debt is different from what was agreed. Suddenly, the situation has spiralled out of control and they find themselves trying to work off the debt, with little hope of ever earning enough to leave. Smuggling becomes trafficking. The discourse of trafficking largely fails to help people in this situation, because it paints them as kidnapped and enchained rather than as trying to migrate. It therefore seeks to ‘rescue’ them by blocking irregular migration routes and sending undocumented people home— often the very last thing trafficked people want. Although they might hate their exploitative workplace, their ideal option would be to stay in their destination country in a different job or with better workplace conditions; an acceptable option would be to stay in the country under the current, shit working conditions, but the very worst option would be to be sent home with their debt still unpaid.

By viewing trafficking as conceptually akin to kidnap, anti-trafficking activists, NGOs, and governments can sidestep broader questions of safe migration. If the trafficked person is brought across borders unwillingly, there is no need to think about the people who will attempt this migration regardless of its illegality or conclude that the way to make people safer is to offer them legal migration routes. People smuggling tends to happen to less vulnerable migrants: those who have the cash to pay a smuggler upfront or have a family or community already settled in the destination country. People trafficking tends to happen to more vulnerable migrants: those who must take on a debt to the smuggler to travel and who have no community connections in their destination country. Both want to travel, however, and this is what anti-trafficking conversations largely obscure with their talk about kidnap and chains.

Our position is that no human being is ‘illegal’. People should have the right to travel and to cross borders, and to live and work where they wish. As we wrote in the introduction, border controls are a relatively new invention – they emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century as part of colonial logics of racial domination and exclusion. (ICE, the brutal American immigration enforcement police, was only created in its modern form in 2003; the previous iteration of it is as recent as the 1930s, an agency called Immigration and Naturalization Services.) The mass migrations of the twenty-first century are driven by human-made catastrophes – climate change, poverty, war – and reproduce the glaring inequalities from which they emerge. Countries in the global north bear hugely disproportionate responsibility for climate change, yet disproportionately close their doors to people fleeing the effects of climate choas, leaving desperate families to sleep under canvas amid snow at the edges of Fortress Europe. As migrant-rights organiser Harsha Walia writes, ‘While history is marked by the hybridity of human societies and the desire for movement, the reality of most of migration today reveals the unequal relations between rich and poor, between North and South, between whiteness and its others.’

A system where everybody could migrate, live, and work legally and in safety would not be a huge, radical departure; it would simply take seriously the reality that people are already migrating and working, and that as a society we should prioritise their safety and rights. Some journalists and policymakers argue that migration brings down wages. However, the current system, wherein undocumented people cannot assert their labour rights and as a result are hugely vulnerable to workplace exploitation, brings down wages by ensuring that there is a group of workers who bosses can underpay or otherwise exploit with impunity. Low wages and workplace exploitation are tackled through worker organising and labour law – not through attempting to limit migration, which produces undocumented workers who have no labour rights.

However, instead of starting from the premise of valuing human life, the countries of the global north enact harsh immigration laws that make it hard for people from global south countries to migrate. You don’t stop people wanting or needing to migrate by making it illegal for them to do so, you just make it more dangerous and difficult, and leave them more vulnerable to exploitation. Punitive laws may dissuade some from making the journey, but they guarantee that everyone who does travel is doing so in the worst possible conditions. Spending billions of dollars on policing borders actively makes this worse, without addressing the reasons people might want to migrate – notably, gross inequality between nations, which in large part is a legacy of colonial – and contemporary – plunder and imperialist violence.”]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

#molly smith #juno mac #history stuff #currently reading

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intersectionalpraxis · 11 months

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I saw your yesterday comment about occupation of Palestine land by isreal with the help of uk and usa.

Do you read history on social media or books ?

Israeli live there before islam come in existence.

Islam came in existence in 610-613AD.

"The promise land" 1500-2000BC.

so that land belongs to both that's why they got 2 nations.

And if you think there should not be Israel because of Palestine.

With this logic, in Europe almost 15 countries will be vanished because they got their name after separation from Russia.

With this logic south Asian countries like Pakistan and bengladesh should not exist or INDIA should capture them.

In EAST ASIA , china should capture Taiwan.

And a lot more.

War is always worst for humanity.

But in War, only powerful Win.

" you pet a snake in your backyard and you think it will only bite your neighbours, that will never possible"

I wish you read more than making unnecessary noise on the internet with half knowledge

I'm genuinely curious, how old are you and what is your educational background?

What you're spouting here is Israeli and American propaganda/indoctrination.

Reminder: 'Israel' did not exist until 1948. Great Britain and the United States CREATED a space for Israeli settlers on Indigenous Palestinian land post World War 2. Palestinian people were there for a LONG time before Israeli's settled, displaced hundreds of thousands, and murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians if they did not leave (this is referred to the Nakba of 1948). This is a literal historical fact.

And you're asking me where I'm receiving my information? I have a Master's degree with a research background. If I'm ignorant about ANY topic I look into it extensively and properly. Making sure the sources I am looking at are reflexive and peer-reviewed and un-biased. And talk to experts when I can.

And the histories of the different countries you listed have completely different contexts. You can't convolute this with what has happened and is happening to Palestine. Because most of those regions separated from the major power/government in control to gain their sovereignty. What is not clicking here? The very existence of Israel has colonialist and imperialist roots. Israel isn't fighting for their independence from Palestine. Palestine was forcibly settled upon.

And wars are mostly started in the name of what? There's so much to unpack in a sentiment like that, but when a government has literal weapons of mass destruction and they're using it to suppress, oppress, and enact terror and genocide on another city or country who don't have near the capacity to defend itself then this is just unilateral violence. You act so flippant about the nature of war like "only the powerful win" as though wars don't devastate and destroy many people's lives and homes and entire communities.

Your comment has some of the most crass rhetoric I've read for the past 24 hours. Congratulations.

And also, while we are at it -the reason why American Christians support Israel is because they believe that if they save this 'holy land,' Jesus will return and if Jewish people do not convert to Christianity they won't see the pearly gates.

Again, all historical facts. Maybe you should dedicate more time to reading books and journal articles by Palestinian authors first, and then anti-Zionist Israeli Jewish people.

#feminist #palestine #freepalastine🇵🇸#free gaza #gaza #israel is an apartheid state #israel #history

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mistydeyes · 1 year

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izzie’s late night thoughts pt.9

okay so i’m starting a new series about the 141 dating an american and i was curious where you’re all from! i’m from the mid-atlantic/new york city area :) feel free to elaborate in the tags or replies💌

(also i tried to make as many separate categories but tumblr only lets you have 12 options :/)

#izzie asks #poll #random #izzie thoughts

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mjschryver · 9 months

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This is a brilliant idea. I hope someone brings it to life some day.

Some more details on the dates, if you're curious:

Technically, the term Victorian England refers to only The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; and only during the reign of Queen Victoria, 1837-1901. The term Victorian Era is sometimes used to encompass geographic areas where the UK had great influence, such as its colonies, and mainland Europe. The Victorian Era is sometimes considered to cover as broad a timespan as 1832-1914; that period begins with the passage of The Reform Act, encompasses the traditional Edwardian and Georgian Eras, and ends with the start of WWI.

The American West began with "Now that we're free, let's explore west of the Appalachians," in 1783; carried on to "Let's explore the Louisiana Purchase," in 1803; continued through "What do we do now?", in 1865; and finally ended with "That's enough of that, you; we have to help fight a World War," in 1917. The peak of the "cowboy hats and six-shooters" stereotype stretched from c.1840 to c.1900, covering Manifest Destiny, the Civil War, the Gold Rush, and multiple attempts at multiple genocides.

The Samurai came to political and military power c.1185. In 1868, Emperor Meiji restored imperial rule to Japan. The samurai's time effectively ended in 1879, with the completion of the Meiji government's efforts to defund the Samurai. (No, I am not making that up.)

Piracy in the Caribbean Sea began almost immediately after Europeans discovered the Caribbean Sea, c.1500. The level of piratical activity waxed and waned enormously over the next three-and-a-half centuries, as did which countries fought most strongly against the pirates. The signing of the Treaty of Paris effectively ended Caribbean piracy in 1856.

Emperor Norton "reigned" from September, 1859, until his death at the age of 61 in January, 1880.

That window – 1859 to 1880 – covers prime Victorian Era, prime Old West, the waning tail of the Samurai, and the first two-and-a-half decades of the post-piracy Caribbean. The range of characters available, of all ages and types, is truly spectacular.

The genius original post – and its 172,000 notes and reblogs – is here. I reblogged it once myself, a year and a half ago; I wouldn't want to rob anyone of their Tumblr traffic.

Reposting it here gave me a chance to isolate the OP's thoughts, separate from anyone else's comments, and allowed me to set down my own lengthy thoughts in return.

I hope no one minds; many Tumblr users used to get awfully testy about this stuff, back in the day.

#history #alternate history #prokopetz

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hasdrubal-gisco · 3 days

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after some delay here’s my commentary on the draghi whitepaper. cut for length - 7min read

something that was nice to see mentioned, even though it was only a passing remark was that europe is an old money continent. as the report does, i will also contrast the EU with the US and china. in europe, money is largely managed by the state and large banks. the states are entrenched, and feel no pressure to maintain legitimacy, and have therefore allowed themselves tremendous inefficiency and poor results. massive amounts of public money are then handed over to semi-public companies (energy, construction, healthcare) with little to show. banks in europe on the other hand are incredibly conservative (heavy preference for government bonds and fx), and their lack of risk-taking is significantly stifling growth opportunities. for all the pro-social policies, the healthcare and unemployment and paid leave, european workers are further from capital than both their american and chinese counterparts. quickly for contrast, in the US much more money is put into the pocket of workers both in absolute and relative terms, and money put aside for retirement/long-term savings is spread out over a greater number of less large banks/other asset management companies (credit unions, unions, hedges, etc.). it’s an attitude problem which you probably cannot legislate your way out of. china manages money an entirely different way but with the same attitude as americans, and for exactly that reason, even though europe has the infrastructure set up for china-esque investment in development, it again lacks the attitude.

the cost of energy in the EU was already covered in the whitepaper, but it bears emphasis that this is entirely deliberate and self-inflicted. russia did not cut off the European natural gas supply, the EU did that of its own volition with the purported goal of hurting the Russian economy. the sanction package (including separate US and UK sanctions on russia) which forced the sale of assets from foreigners to russians at bargain prices due to short deadlines basically undid the privatization of the 90s – there are short term pains but this potentially sets up Russia for 50 years of growth as much less money is extracted out internationally. green energy incentives are a coat of paint on more government handouts going to the same energy companies as before to “support their pivot.”

to complain about resource dependence is also moronic of the EU to do – another thing that’s totally self-inflicted. an unwillingness to exploit your own resources is not the same as a lack of them. the reason the EU won’t extract its own resources is the same as it lost a lot of its industrial capability in the post-wwii consensus – profit seeking. more important than the lower cost basis of labor abroad, was the drastically lower risk of organized resistance, through either engagement in the political system or strike. by having production (either extraction or refinement) abroad, it protected the established businesses from having to compete with worker self-interest (which lead to the disappearance of worker self-interest as a political pursuit !). i think the lithium in serbia should be mined, as should the lithium in germany, the oil in romania, gallium in france and so on. The problem is that it’ll give mine and oil refinery workers an iota of bargaining power which they’d use to demand a raise in standards. uh oh ! as always, import is the benefit of trade, and export the cost of it. as soon as they stop being retarded about this, europe can easily hit its stride as it probably has the best labor force in the world – painfully underutilized. remember the criticism of capitalism is about its inefficiency, not that it’s mean.

regarding security, you either have to make a federal eu army or keep sovereign national armies – in either case the yoke of america has to be broken. would be very cool if there was some kind of late 19th/early 20th century multi-ethnic empire whose military structure could serve as inspiration for a hypothetical eu army. oh well ! obviously industrial capability to supply this is currently nothing. real 90s kids remember when europoids still made phones with companies like nokia and alcatel, who, surprise surprise had ties to defense technology. bring back the military-industrial complex.

in terms of industrial strategy – it has to be said europe’s industrial capability is not gone entirely. europe still makes the machines that make the machines, the auto/train/airplane industries are there, europe makes most of its own medication under its own licenses. notice how these are all 20th century industries – and as analog moves into digital, the glorious combustion engine becomes electromagnet, you run into things the eu does not but could make. the reason manufacture in china is so cheap is less to do with the cost of labor (which has risen dramatically over the last 25 years) but the already existing infrastructure for manufacture. if you wanted to make a piece of electronics (for example a combination pager-bomb) it is very likely you can find a manufacturer for the plastic casing, circuit boards, lcd screen, etc all within one city if not one industrial park, which drastically cuts your costs as it minimizes transport and storage for intermediate components. this is the benefit of economies of scale, this is the lauded efficiency of a planned economy, and this is what europe has denied itself.

to draghi’s innovation gap, and proposal for more centralized eu support for r&d – this would require the germans and german-derivatives at the ecb/eib/etc. to take some risks particularly in areas they wouldn’t look normally (ie east of berlin, actually east of hanover because even germany doesn’t invest in berlin/east germany). once again this is tied to the attitudes of capital markets, you must either spread it out wider between competing entities (US) or hard five-year-plans and an iron gut (china).

digitalization would help immensely, every state in europe would benefit hugely from cutting the number of government employees in half, and drastically lowering their average age. keep the spending the same and just double the salaries. It makes no sense to have 50-year-olds who don’t know how to scan be bureaucrats and clerks. the 27-year-old polyamorous baristas of bratislava must be made to maintain debian databases.

the average company in europe is running american software on chinese hardware in order to make something stupid (designer handbags or shipping insurance) to sell to americans and the chinese. no reason for this to be the case.

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womenfrommars · 19 days

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Hi I'm from France and I stumbled upon one of your posts about Islam. I'm genuinely sort of terrified of the future here. We finally achieved an atheist majority and fully separated religion from the state but Islam is quickly growing unquestioned. Somehow being antireligion in progressive circles has been fully turned into something bad.

And I don't think I can lie to myself anymore - muslim men are raised into an incredibly misogynistic environment and are strongly encouraged to never question it and benefit from it. I have had first hand interaction with those muslim men who sexually harassed me and pejoratively talked about my rights as a woman. On the French internet there is a massive mob of those same men being incredibly misogynistic everyday on how women dress and act.

And what is truly terrifying is that I'm told to endure it all. That it is just bad apples. Our leftists parties are in full support of it and gain voters from the muslim community, online and irl leftists constantly repeat "islamophobia" to every criticism brandished at Islam. Our discussions are getting americanized when their muslim minority is like 10 times smaller than ours and actually progressive over there. I'm so tired. There is no analysis of religion anymore. There is just choice feminism - choice to hide your body and be a property for men. And questioning the ever growing presence of men who desire to own us is somehow "white feminism". I'm lost and scared that eventually they'll become a big enough population that our laws will change to accommodate their regressive religion and take away my rights as a woman.

Somehow being antireligion in progressive circles has been fully turned into something bad.

Oh no you got that totally wrong. You can shit on Christianity all day long because it's seen as ''the white man's religion'', irrespective of all the non-white Christians who face persecution and subjugation in various parts of the world. And since October 7 it has become extremely normalised in progressive circles to demonise Zionism and by extension the Jewish religion, with false quotes from the Torah going around that all of us non-Jews are subhumans. It's only Islam that is being protected by the progressive left. They harp on about Islamophobia but Christophobia and anti-Semitism are not part of their vocabulary at all

On the French internet there is a massive mob of those same men being incredibly misogynistic everyday on how women dress and act.

Welcome in Europe in 2024! Muslims are not asking to be included, they are asking to be centered and catered to. They're not just asking for halal meat in supermarkets, they want to change European culture significantly. They want to get rid of secularism, sexual liberty, and the improved position of women in European societies. In the UK they're even handing out flyers asking people not to walk their dogs in muslim neighbourhoods because they consider dogs to be spiritually unclean animals. Muslim apologists are openly discussing child marriage online and the right for a muslim man to beat his wife. But leftists would rather talk about Christian misogyny (read: Christian women online sharing tips on how to dress modestly).

Our discussions are getting americanized when their muslim minority is like 10 times smaller than ours and actually progressive over there.

The USA has different immigration laws and mostly accept highly educated, liberalised muslims from Asia and the Middle-East. Almost all of their illegal migrants are from South America where Islam barely exists. The American muslim population is quite wealthy and highly educated as a result of the immigration laws whereas the European muslim population is lower educated and more dependent on social security, overrepresented in crime statistics, and not fully integrated into the culture as a result of the immigration policies from the 70s and the refugee crisis from 2015 and onwards. So to an American if you voice concerns about Islam specifically they see no reason to do so other than racism. I would like to see their reaction if their Christmas markets, concerts, and synagogues are blown up by Islamic terrorists. You'd think 9/11 would have been a wake-up call

And questioning the ever growing presence of men who desire to own us is somehow "white feminism".

Even when ex-muslims come out in favour of Western culture and against Islamic culture the left sees them as puppets because they think minorities cannot think for themselves. Unironically racist. Not to mention ex-muslims face extremely violent threats and social rejection from the Islamic community

I'm lost and scared that eventually they'll become a big enough population that our laws will change to accommodate their regressive religion and take away my rights as a woman.

Honestly I have had such thoughts myself, especially with mass migration coupled with the extremely high birth rate of muslim women. I think the best course of action is restricted immigration combined with intense integration efforts. And we must be willing to defend our Western values publicly even if it means we will be accused of right-wing nationalism or racism. Islam is fundamentally incompatible with secularism and equality between men and women

#juno speaks

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whenitsdarkweilluminate · 4 years

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Dublin 1981

Host: Ireland Participants: 20 Voting method: 12-point system (juries only)

Winner: Bucks Fizz - Making Your Mind Up Country: United Kingdom Points: 136 (59.6% of highest score possible) Language: English

General Overview:

I consider 1981 to be a solid year. Yeah, there's one too many male ballads (probably because of Johnny Logan), but most of the entries are trying something interesting. Every year has some bland duds though.

The production is sufficient, aside from the scoreboard issues. The opening montage shows a variety of Irish culture – famous artifacts, stone forts, castles, doorknobs, and sports. Then it ends with this jagged globe map of Europe. The postcards also return this year, which begin with that same jagged map.

The interval act embraces Irish culture as well. It's a sequence of pre-recorded videos; beginning with a single dancer and some bagpipes by a misty stone fort. Then it cuts to a crowd of traditional dancers and musicians inside a castle room. And it finishes by mixing in modern guitars and drums.

I like the stage design. It consists of warm pastel colours and several circles, which creates an inviting and calm ambience. It's similar to Dublin 1971 stage. I don't have anything to say about the presenter, Doireann Ní Bhriain, though.

The vote reveal is a mess. Austria's spokesperson started listing their points in the running order instead of the new way. The scoreboard had to be corrected several times; like Ireland mistakenly having 326 points and Turkey randomly losing points. And connecting to Yugoslavia was difficult, leading to the iconic “I don't have it”. Despite all that, this was a very close contest. Five different countries held the lead at various points. And the UK / Germany / Switzerland were all tied at 120 points with 2 countries remaining. Ultimately, only 15 points separated the eventual top 4.

Germany loses by 4 points, and they take that as motivation to crush the competition next year. France, on the other hand, throws a tantrum over getting 3rd place and withdraw next year.

Otherwise, Cyprus debuts; which means this is the first instance of Greece giving 12 points to Cyprus! Yugoslavia also returns after 5 years. Israel is back too. And Italy is absent for the first time ever.

Austria: Marty Brem - Wenn du da bist Austria opens the show again. But the bizarre staging is more memorable than the song. The backing singer (whose voice is too quiet) wears a swimsuit and an American football helmet; while the other dancers have headphones on. They move in slow motion, lift their legs, freeze, and do the splits. The staging doesn't match the lyrics either; where Marty feels sad, lonely and lost when his lover is gone. The world just carries on normally. Musically, it's a boring, indistinct ballad. The melody is nonexistent and the instrumental is bland; aside from maybe the intro and chorus transitions.

Turkey: Modern Folk Üçlüsü & Ayşegül - Dönme Dolap The funky guitar and disco strings are cool. The drum/flute intro and the horn appearances are also highlights. And I initially like Ayşegül's solo, where she changes microphone stands. But the chorus feels more like a pre-chorus and the song goes nowhere. The stage presence looks stiff too. The lyrics compare life to a carousel. Both have their ups and downs, but friends stick by during the lows.

Germany: Lena Valaitis - Johnny Blue I love the storytelling lyrics, the tragic atmosphere, and how the song builds. It opens with a melancholic harmonica, which continues to play a big role. The bass and piano are highlights during the first half. Then the drums, strings, and backing vocals become more prominent to intensify the second half; until the post-bridge rests. The “blue... blue.. BLUE JOHNNY BLUE” refrain is super catchy too. “Johnny Blue” is a folk song about a blind man. When he was little, the other kids ostracized and bullied him for not seeing colours; hence his nickname. But music became his outlet and now he's famous, because his songs inspire others to escape life's darkness.

Luxembourg: Jean-Claude Pascal - C'est peut-être pas l'Amérique The 1961 winner returns with... another song that sounds like it's from 1961. This is a sleepy crooner ballad. The strings are dated. The melody is weak. And the lyrics are whatever. JCP explains why music is important to him. It's eternal too. But I don't get the point of saying “American [music] isn't everything”. Otherwise, the slowdown transitions, and the bass guitar + hi-hat parts are okay, but not impactful enough. There's also backing “ooh”s and a backing choir bridge.

Israel: Hakol Over Habibi - Halayla This is funky and disco, but with an Israeli sound. Shlomit's stage presence is great. The repetition of various phrases is catchy; particularly the “Ma shehaya, ma shehaya...” back-and-forth, the “laila laila la”s, and the “HALAYLA” shouts. And the backing vocals enter and exit at the right times. The song also grows in intensity, but it's too monotonous. It feels like one long chorus, aside from the Mediterranean intro/outro, which I do like. In the lyrics, this couple will say things tonight they've never said before, even if it feels like they have.

Denmark: Debbie Cameron & Tommy Seebach - Krøller eller ej The feelgood atmosphere, the energetic dancing, and Debbie's likeability are great. She stands centre stage while Tommy's on the keyboards. She briefly joins him too. But the song's structure is off. The first minute is hype, with the video game 'pew's, the overpowering disco instrumental, and the melody holding anticipation. The chorus is a decent release, but the post-chorus is too tense and long. The ensuing dance break is also great, with the horns and psychedelic guitar. But then the second verse sounds like an outro. The lyrics are about loving their children regardless of what they look like.

Yugoslavia: Seid Memić Vajta - Lejla Yugoslavia's return involves some unpleasant raspy vocals. Thankfully they have better entries coming up. The verses are a typical ballad. Then a swinging bass guitar appears, the orchestra pauses, and the chorus is breezy sleepy soft rock, with backing “nanana”s. The chorus is more bearable. In the lyrics, Seid says they would've been happy together had his ex stayed.

Finland: Riki Sorsa - Reggae OK This is definitely reggae, but I have a hard time taking it as a serious reggae song. It's also monotonous and never-ending. There's too many “Reggae... OK”s. The intense intro doesn't transition smoothly. Riki's voice is unpleasant. The gym class whistles are unnecessary. The accordion break is too long. And the goofy backing members are cringe. I'm indifferent on the clapping breakdown. The lyrics are about opening people's minds to a music genre they aren't used to it.

France: Jean Gabilou - Humanahum The end of France's most dominant period. “Humanahum” is very 'doom and gloom' and serious. The lyrics reflect Cold War dread, but they're still relevant today. It's set in the year 3000, where an old man recounts how wonderful Earth once was, before war exterminated all life. I like how the song builds in intensity: the strings get heavier, the drums shift gears, and the despair rises in Jean's voice. The chorus is also catchy and ominous, with the escalating “Humanahum”s and “Terre! Terre! Des Hommes!” The soft backing responses add an interesting contrast to the verses too. And the church organ intro is chilling.

Spain: Bacchelli - Y sólo tú The blandest entry of '81. It's too easy-listening for me. The “nada nada nada” and “whoa oh whoa” hooks are too light. It has a relaxing summer beach vibe though. The xylophone-y intro, hand drums, and whistling flutes are alright. But the heavy strings and trumpet crashes makes it sound old-fashioned. The lyrics are about a dreamy romantic date on the beach.

Netherlands: Linda Williams - Het is een wonder The obligatory circus music entry. The calliope plays a major role, right from the intro. The chorus is catchy, with the handclaps, and how it recedes at first, then the calliope and bouncy acoustic rhythm swoop in after. The verses also feature these sparkly whistles. The song has a warm, relaxed, and bright atmosphere, but it's kinda basic and lacks substance. In the lyrics, Linda remarks on the positive effect this person's love has had on her. She's become a new person.

Ireland: Sheeba - Horoscopes The message is such a 'first world problem' LOL, but it's a good one. Sheeba advises against relying on horoscopes (or “celestial lies”) for answers. Because it's “crazy” to surrender control of our lives. Instead, we decide our own destinies and success. One of the stanzas even lists all the star signs... except mine! (and Sagittarius). Regardless, the melody is super catchy: “DON'T LET THE PLANETS...” I like the slow intro with the violin. The song turns energetic after that. And the deep cellos are a highlight.

Norway: Finn Kalvik - Aldri i livet Norway is last place again with “nul points”. The vocals aren't the greatest. The first verse is quite bare and boring. And I dislike that scurrying instrument in the intro and chorus (alongside the tripping cymbals). The pre-chorus melody and strings are nice though. And Finn gives a personal performance. He plays the guitar on a stool. In the lyrics, he asks his lover to remember his promise that he'll never leave them.

United Kingdom: Bucks Fizz - Making Your Mind Up (winner review below)

Portugal: Carlos Paião - Playback The juries didn't get Portugal's zany staging. The backing members are like marionettes. They squat during the intro bangs, they have funny microphone movements and leg extensions, and they turn their heads during the “AY PLAYBACK” hooks. They also wear separate colours. The numerous “playback”s are very catchy. The verses are dark, with a circling synth and Carlos sounding like a commander. Plus some addictive piano growls and violins surrounding the “AY PLAYBACK”s. The pre-chorus then feels anxious. And the sudden shift into the chorus is effective. It's a cynical song that calls someone out for deceptively using playback to cover up bad vocals.

Belgium: Emly Starr - Samson That “SAMSON!” *guitar* *horn* *bell* bit is so dramatic and addictive. Emly's arm movements really sell it. I also like the victorious Roman horns and drums in the intro, the funky verses, the pre-chorus “ooh”s, and the whispering bridge. It's a fun entry. On stage, there's historical robes, and two dancers waving giant feathers. The lyrics reference the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah, where Emly fancies this 'playboy' who won't commit. She wants to be his only girl.

Greece: Yiannis Dimitras - Feggari kalokerino This is a long and dramatic intro. There's cymbal crashes and digital ripples, as the camera shows a rose. Then the piano creates a compelling mood. The orchestra and vocals are very grand here. And Yiannis delivers an old school performance. But him staring at and sitting by the pianist is kinda creepy. The lyrics are poetic and romantic. The melody isn't that memorable, but the instrumental is intriguing.

Cyprus: Island - Monika Cyprus's debut is super wholesome, comforting, and uplifting. That saxophone cheers me up. And the “MONI MONI [...] MONIKA” chorus is certainly catchy. Nearly the entire song has the same melody and atmosphere, from the piano intro until the outro slows down. But it works. The overpowering harmonies and the key change win me over. The “ooh”s and “nanana”s are filler though. On stage, they sway a lot. The lyrics celebrate this couple's many years together and overcoming the hard times.

Switzerland: Peter, Sue and Marc - Io senza te The folk trio saved their best for last. Their 4th appearance is in Italian; effectively substituting for Italy's absence. The song has a bittersweet finality vibe. The late running order spot is perfect. The pan flute moments are nature-esque and give goosebumps. The verses are calm and reflective, where (Peter or Marc) pour their heart out through their raspy vocals. There's two thumps, then Sue's chorus is an anthem. In the lyrics, the couple have a beach walk conversation. They want to put the past behind and recapture what they had, because they don't know how to move on.

Sweden: Björn Skifs - Fångad i en dröm The Blue Swede guy returns, as Sweden selects another rock song. The restless stomping beat and the punching chorus hook have attitude! The chorus is also boosted by the guitar responses, the stops, and the whimsical instrument afterwards. The strings are a highlight in the verses too. And the slower pre-chorus breaks things up. The lyrics are about being trapped in a dream that doesn't provide your desired escape.

The Winner:

“Making Your Mind Up” is a turning point in Eurovision. The skirt removal gag was risqué for the time, although it's tame by today's standards. It signalled that staging matters in this contest. Fast forward to today, and yeah, the staging often plays an critical role in a song's placement. Does this mean gimmicks are now valued over talent? I don't know, it's a tired debate.

So the UK achieves their 4th victory, despite an off-key vocal performance from Cheryl. Apparently she was given the lead mic by mistake. The studio version is cleaner. Still, the song carries frantic energy from start to finish. It chugs along like a fast locomotive. The snare drum drives things, but my fave part is the guitar solo. There's also pauses upon the title phrase. Some clapping towards the end. And the instrumental (and the staging) are like dancing at a 1950s diner.

The song is fairly camp and catchy: “DON'T LET YOUR INDECISION...” is the best part. Lyrically, the narrator encourages the subject to tease and play games. But eventually, they'll have to decide on making this relationship official. There's some sexual innuendos (“speed it up; slow it down; turn it on; put it out”); leading to the “bending the rules” to “see some more” line. That line is when the skirt pull happens.

On stage, the 4 members wear separate colours. They shake their hips, jog on the spot, do 360 turns, put their hands on their heads (like going crazy), and do various arm movements. They also kinda squat during the chorus. Plus there's a dance break, where the ladies jump into the men's waists.

Verdict: “B” tier. Enjoyable enough but also kinda empty.

My points go to.... 01. Germany: Lena Valaitis - Johnny Blue 02. Portugal: Carlos Paião - Playback 03. Switzerland: Peter, Sue and Marc - Io senza te 04. Belgium: Emly Starr - Samson 05. Sweden: Björn Skifs - Fångad i en dröm 06. Denmark: Debbie Cameron & Tommy Seebach - Krøller eller ej 07. Ireland: Sheeba - Horoscopes 08. United Kingdom: Bucks Fizz - Making Your Mind Up 09. France: Jean Gabilou - Humanahum 10. Cyprus: Island - Monika

11. Israel: Hakol Over Habibi - Halayla 12. Netherlands: Linda Williams - Het is een wonder 13. Greece: Yiannis Dimitras - Feggari kalokerino 14. Turkey: Modern Folk Üçlüsü & Ayşegül - Dönme Dolap 15. Norway: Finn Kalvik - Aldri i livet 16. Spain: Bacchelli - Y sólo tú 17. Luxembourg: Jean-Claude Pascal - C'est peut-être pas l'Amérique 18. Yugoslavia: Seid Memić Vajta - Lejla 19. Austria: Marty Brem - Wenn du da bist 20. Finland: Riki Sorsa - Reggae OK

#eurovision #eurovision song contest #eurovision review #eurovision 1981

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